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RapNews: episode 9. 2011 hits harder than a pre-apocalyptic hangover as “the economy” threatens to annihilate our stock-piles of imaginary, inflated wealth, spawning a battle of epic proportions as insurgent grassroots forces move in to #OccupywallStreet and coalitions of indignados hold their ground in Athens, Madrid and Tel Aviv, facing riotgear, batons and tazers which seek to prevent a more equal redistribution of the proverbial pie. …But enough action and excitement! It’s time for some heroic armchair philosophy: Join your affable host, Robert Foster, as he attempts to shine some light on this mysterious creature, “the economy”. Is this the failure of capitalism that we are witnessing, or its triumph? Is it the end of the end of history, or yet another crazy chapter in the whimsical journey of the human experiment? For the occasion, we’ve pulled out the big guns: admittedly it was a tough choice deciding who to interview: we could’ve had Alan Greenspan on the show, or the Emperor himself, Milton Friedman; the first lady, Christine Lagarde; or financial buffs like Gerald Celente, Peter Schiff and Donald Trump. But to get the freshest juice we knew we had to go further – much further. Rap News 9 features two VIP Internet grandees who have uploaded gigabytes of truth via the one remaning free frequency – the internet – to feed a discerning and ravenous audience, hungry for answers: US Congressman, Ron Paul, and Zeitgeist film-maker, Peter Joseph. Whilst these two fine folk agree with each other on many things, fortunately, there’s no shortage of issues to rap-battle about: Do we need to inject more paper into the financial furnace, or do we need a different fuel entirely – more gold and less lead? Some say we should ditch the entire engine and replace it with something entirely new – but with what exactly? Is the answer to our impeding economic demise contained in shiny new cybernated inventions, or might it actually require us to remember and look back to tried and tested models of economic organisation? Well, time’s short so let the rhyme-rodeo begin as we blast off on a rollercoaster odyssey. It’s the stupid Economy, in all its gory glory.

**** Want to SUPPORT Rap News to keep broadcasting rhyme and reason on the only remaining free frequency?: http://thejuicemedia.com/donate – thank you to everyone who has donated already – massive respect!

**** CREDITS: RN9 has been a herculean collaborative endeavour, for which we are hugely grateful to: Our ineffably awesome designer, Zoe Tame fromhttp://visualtonic.com.au for creating all the original artwork, backgrounds and vectors; Zoe (VAL) and Ellen (Goldie) for yet more lingerie escapades; Lucy for VAL voice-over and Ming for big-gonad Trailer-Man voice; Dave Abbot for cutting-edge state-of-the art CGI effects, animations and exteme doses of
patience; Rosie Dunlop for make-up mayhem and latex love; Trav and Nick for lights and logistical assistance; Milly Langworth and Gilles Gundermann for prop sourcing; ; Jason for not wigging out over the wigs; Lucy & Caitlin for ongoing support; and all the people who write to us to ask us when the next episode is coming out 🙂

**** BEAT: It’s been a Frankensteinian effort on the part of our local musical luminaries for the production on this episode’s beat: Dan West out at Tweak and Twang studios (http://tweakandtwang.org) for phat drum sequencing; Jonathan Dreyfus & Adrian Sergovich for wicked orchestrations; Julez for Zeitgeist instrumentation. Download the mp3 here:http://www.reverbnation.com/rapnews

**** CAPTIONS & SUBTITLES: Many thanks to our French friends, Koolfy and Siltaar, for sync’ing English closed captions.

!!!OCCUPY YOUR CITY!!! Find Your City: http://occupytogether.org/OCCUPY TOGETHER: a hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St. As we have followed the news on facebook, twitter, and the various live feeds across the internet, we felt compelled to build a site that would help spread the word as more protests organize across the country. We hope to provide people with information about events that are organizing, ongoing, and building across the U.S. as we, the 99%, take action against the greed and corruption of the 1%.

We will try our best to provide you with the most accurate information possible. However, we are just a few volunteers and errors are bound to occur. Please be patient as we get this site off the ground and populated and please contact us if you have any info on new events, corrections, or suggestions for this site. You can contact us at info[at]occupytogether[dot]org.

We will only grow stronger in our solidarity and we will be heard, not just in New York, but in echoes across this nation.

Important note: Occupy Together will never ask for any monetary donations. We suggest that, if you want to donate monetarily, that you visit this site to help those who currently Occupy Wall St.

“MOST OF THE PEOPLE WHO WILL BE WRITING, SPEAKING AND PONTIFICATING ABOUT THE DISORDER THIS WEEKEND HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GROW UP IN A COMMUNITY WHERE THERE ARE NO JOBS, NO SPACE TO LIVE OR MOVE, AND THE POLICE ARE ON THE STREETS STOPPING-AND-SEARCHING YOU AS YOU COME HOME FROM SCHOOL. THE PEOPLE WHO DO WILL BE WAKING UP THIS WEEK IN THE SURE AND CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE THAT AFTER DECADES OF BEING IGNORED AND MARGINALISED AND HARASSED BY THE POLICE, AFTER MONTHS OF SEEING ANY CONCEIVABLE HOPE OF A BETTER FUTURE CONFISCATED, THEY ARE FINALLY ON THE NEWS. IN ONE NBC REPORT, A YOUNG MAN IN TOTTENHAM WAS ASKED IF RIOTING REALLY ACHIEVED ANYTHING: “YES,” SAID THE YOUNG MAN. “YOU WOULDN’T BE TALKING TO ME NOW IF WE DIDN’T RIOT, WOULD YOU?” “TWO MONTHS AGO WE MARCHED TO SCOTLAND YARD, MORE THAN 2,000 OF US, ALL BLACKS, AND IT WAS PEACEFUL AND CALM AND YOU KNOW WHAT? NOT A WORD IN THE PRESS. LAST NIGHT A BIT OF RIOTING AND LOOTING AND LOOK AROUND YOU.” EAVESDROPPING FROM AMONG THE ONLOOKERS, I LOOKED AROUND. A DOZEN TV CREWS AND NEWSPAPER REPORTERS INTERVIEWING THE YOUNG MEN EVERYWHERE ‘’’ THERE ARE COMMUNITIES ALL OVER THE COUNTRY THAT NOBODY PAID ATTENTION TO UNLESS THERE HAD RECENTLY BEEN A RIOT OR A MURDERED CHILD. WELL, THEY’RE PAYING ATTENTION NOW”